Update from Shruti Garg (At MIT August 2011–June 2013)
I was in MIT from Aug 2011 to June 2013 while my spouse pursued MBA from Sloan. I am in Bay Area, California these days and I miss the warmth of S&P, the welcoming culture of MIT and transportation of Boston. I gave birth to my daughter in July last year and have been busy since then in raising her and enjoying each milestone of hers.
Along with another MIT spouse Ankita, I started a blog Career in Transit. We are in the process of re-launching it as a full fleshed site. Ankita and I joined together and launched another initiative named ArtKaari in March 2014.
Email: ms.shrutig@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/Artkaari
Update from Julie Fahnestock (At MIT 2009–2013)
This story is for you. Because she understands your journey. Not just the one you make in the rain and the slush to Market Basket. Not just how you've raised your kids in Westgate or Eastgate. But your journey of being partnered with a genius. She lived at MIT, also known as Planet Nerd, for four years, pretending to understand which language her husband was speaking. Something to do with numbers and pie. She is a right-brained feminista surviving a left-brained world. Who is she? She is you. She is me. She is: The Wife Behind the Genius.
Julie lived in Westgate at MIT from 2009–2013 with her husband Thomas. She loved being part of the community and misses the 'Free Food List', the J-term events and her MIT sailing card! She now lives in West Palm Beach, Florida and spends most of her time working on her starting her content development company- though she'd rather be at the beach.
Update from Adeline Martini (at MIT 2006 – present)
"Enjoy it now; we will only be here for two years,” so my husband told me… eight years ago!
But life got in the way and we never left. Today, we have two French-American kids, a house, and jobs here in Boston. It was a long and uneasy path, always readjusting ourselves, with that major question on our minds, “When are we going back?” Now it's more like, “Will we ever go back?” The hardest part was to admit that we might never go back, but once we did that, we started to see life here differently; it seemed easier, simpler. We finally belonged here.
Every day we are getting more and more Bostonian! And now we complain about our own country when we visit there. I'm not sure we will ever go back to France, but that is not a question I ask myself anymore. I live in Boston and for now I enjoy it. We will see what tomorrow brings. Carpe Diem!
Update from Ankita Tiwari
I hope you are enjoying beautiful summer in Boston. Here in India, it's too hot. Shruti [Garg—another MIT s&p spouse] and I have started a small business named Artkaari. We sell Madhubani art, centuries old art from India to our online buyers. Our purpose is to offer innovative, cost effective Madhubani paintings on clothing, accessories, and home decor to customers. The aim of the business is to encourage Madhubani artisans, residing in rural interiors of Bihar, India to showcase their finest creations of Madhubani paintings to the outside world. Currently we sell our products through a facebook page and we are planning it expand it further.
We have also bought our domain for Career in Transit and will soon be launching our own site. For more information on Career in Transit (a website created specifically for spouses coming to the U.S. on dependent visas), please see here: http://careerintransit.wordpress.com
Update from Celine (at MIT 2004–2009)
We have been living in Seattle, the land of beautiful evergreens and high tech companies (Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing). My husband is among the techies working for a big firm while I work remotely doing mobile development for a start-up in Boston, then transitioned to doing database/web development for a small local company. Our kids are now in elementary school. Hard to believe they were born in Boston and had their first friendships there! We miss the MIT community, especially the international friends that we met and still keep in touch with. Can't agree more with this article. Looking forward to visiting Boston again. The city has so much to offer!
Cheers!
celine007@gmail.com
Update from Corrinne Fogg
We left Boston in July 2010, and moved to Dallas TX. It was a huge change, probably too huge a change, as then we moved to Philadelphia in 2012. We love it here, but I still prefer Cambridge! I miss all the lovely friends I made through MIT spouses&partners, most of them have left now, but some are still in Boston and I got to see them last summer when we took a short vacation there. If anyone is moving to Dallas or Philly please contact me; I would be happy to tell you everything I know!
